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George Eliot Quotes

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Famous George Eliot Quotes

“When our life is a continuous trial, the moments of respite seem only to substitute the heaviness of dread for the heaviness of actual suffering; the curtain of cloud seems parted an instant only that we may measure all its horror as it hangs low, black, and imminent, in contrast with the transient brightness; the waterdrops that visit the parched lips in the desert bear with them only the keen imagination of thirst.”

LifeMayMomentsSeemsLife IsSufferingBlackImaginationOur LivesBearsHorrorLowsLipsCloudsTrialsDesertInstantSubstitutesContrastDreadThirstCurtainsBrightnessTransientHeavinessRespite
Book:Silas Marner and Scenes of Clerical Life
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“Looking at your life as a debt may seem the dreariest view of things at a distance; but it cannot really be so. What makes life dreary is the want of motive; but once beginning to act with the penitential, loving purpose you have in your mind, there will be unexpected satisfactions--there will be newly-opening needs--continually coming to carry you on from day to day. You will find your life growing like a plant.”

WantLifeNeedsMindMaySeemsPurposeViewsGrowingDistancePlantSatisfactionDebtOpeningMotiveUnexpectedDay To DayDreary
Book:The Works of George Eliot in Twelve Volumes: Scenes of clerical life - Life of George Eliot
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“Love is such a simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a sweet girl of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud first opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning. Such young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places.”

IfsLoveFirstsHeartTwoSoulYoungGirlAsksSimpleLove IsWonderMorningLove YouYouthSweetSummerTwentiesOpeningHidingGlancesCurvesBudSimple ThingsRaptureRippleVelvetSeventeenPeachesHiding PlaceSweet Girl
Book:Adam Bede: Top Novelist Focus
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“Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasseled flower.”

LoveHumansSoulProcessInfluenceFlowerLogicBlessedSeedsTinyMysteriousTallBroadsStemLeafsHuman SoulGlowingAlgebra
Book:Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)
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“Young love-making--that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to--the things whence its subtle interlacings are swung--are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.”

LoveMadeYoungJoyBeliefDarkVisionBlueMeetingsFingersLipsPhrasesSubtleRaysYearningCheeksSpontaneousYoung LoveUnfinishedMomentaryLove MakingCompletenessIndefinableOrbs
Book:Middlemarch: Easyread Edition
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“Great Love has many attributes, and shrines For varied worshippers, but his force divine Shows most its many-named fulness in the man Whose nature multitudinously mixed-- Each ardent impulse grappling with a thought-- Resists all easy gladness, all content Save mystic rapture, where the questioning soul Flooded with consciousness of good that is Finds life one bounteous answer.”

MenLoveSoulShowsForceEasyAnswersConsciousnessDivineHe ManImpulseAttributesQuestioningGreat LoveMysticRaptureArdentGladnessShrinesWorshippersGrappling
Book:Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)
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“The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence; it enlarges the imagined range for self to move in: but in after years it can only continue to be joy on the same terms as other long-lived love--that is, by much suppression of self, and power of living in the experience of another.”

YearsFirstsLongSelfMovingJoyMotherTermLove IsAnimalExistenceDelightRangeSensibilityExpansionAbsorbingSuppressionMother's Love
Book:Felix Holt: The Radical
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“It is a fact perhaps kept a little too much in the background, that mothers have a self larger than their maternity, and that when their sons have become taller than themselves, and are gone from them to college or into the world, there are wide spaces of their time which are not filled with praying for their boys, reading old letters, and envying yet blessing those who are attending to their shirt-buttons.”

WorldLittlesSelfFactsMotherReadingSpaceBoysGoneToo MuchCollegeSonPrayingBlessingLettersFilledWideBackgroundsShirtsButtonsAttendingMaternityOld Letters
Book:Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)
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“I've had my say out, and I shall be the' easier for't all my life. There's no pleasure i' living, if you're to be corked up forever, and only dribble your mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel.”

IfsMindPleasureOpinionForeverEasierBarrelsSlyDribble
Book:George Eliot Collection: Middlemarch, Adam Bede, Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, and The Mill on the Floss
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“Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul: There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires That trample o'er the dead to seize their spoil, Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible As exhaltations laden with slow death, And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys Breathes pallid pestilence.”

SoulJoyDesireTerrorBreatheChiefsVengeanceSpoilCapturedIrresistibleHurryingPestilence
Book:Daniel Deronda0: Collection of British and American Authors
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“There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their own lives--when the slow urgency of growing generations turns into the tread of an invading army or the dire clash of civil war, and grey fathers know nothing to seek for but the corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forget all vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands.”

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Book:Daniel Deronda
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“I can't abide to see men throw away their tools i' that way, the minute the clock begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure i' their work, and was afraid o' doing a stroke too much.... I hate to see a man's arms drop down as if he was shot, before the clock's fairly struck, just as if he'd never a bit o' pride and delight in's work. The very grindstone 'ull go on turning a bit after you loose it.”

IfsMenWayI CanHateBitsWorkPleasureToo MuchMinutesPrideArmsGoes OnShotsToolsI HateDelightStrikesClockStrokesGrindstone
Book:Four Novels of George Eliot
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